Ikmen 16 - Body Count (29 page)

‘You had the afternoon off today?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And what did you do with your afternoon off, Suzan?’

‘I went to look at the shops in Ni
ş
anta
ş
ı
,’ she said.

‘Which shops?’

‘I like the big stores, Beyman and Vakko,’ she said, naming two of
İ
stanbul’s most famous department stores.

‘And you spent all afternoon in Beyman and Vakko?’

‘Yes, sir. Efendi had a visitor due to come at four. He said he didn’t want me back before six.’

Süleyman briefly looked at the uniformed policewoman, and then said, ‘Who? Do you know who Abdurrahman Efendi received here this afternoon?’

‘It was a man he’d seen before,’ she said. ‘A foreigner. He didn’t like him and he said he didn’t want to talk to him for long. They spoke some Turkish but mostly English.’

‘Do you know the name or the nationality of this foreigner?’ Süleyman asked.

‘I don’t know his name, but I think he might be English,’ the girl said. And then she began to cry again. ‘I’m so sorry, sir, that I didn’t call the police as soon as I found Efendi. I was so frightened I just couldn’t move.’

After dropping off Gonca’s hair samples at the pathology laboratory, Çetin
İ
kmen was almost home when his phone rang. Although he couldn’t fathom his hands-free mobile phone kit, he answered it anyway and spoke to Süleyman for some time before turning the car around and heading for the station. It was already dark, and after the difficult time he’d had with Gonca, he’d just wanted to go home as soon as he was able. But he couldn’t, because for the first time a twenty-first-of-the-month murder had been committed and they actually had a lead.

Süleyman had already arrived with Arthur Regan when
İ
kmen entered Interview Room 2. It was very strange to see the elderly Englishman in this particular context, but it did make some sort of sense.

‘Mr Regan,’ Süleyman began. ‘You know by now that your brother-in-law Abdurrahman
Ş
afak was found dead at his apartment earlier this evening.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You told me yourself, Inspector Süleyman. I am, if not sad, shocked and distressed. Abdurrahman
Ş
afak was my wife’s brother.’

‘You were not sad …’

‘It’s no secret that I didn’t get on with Abdurrahman. He didn’t get on with me.’

‘Why was that, please?’

‘You know why.’

‘We are recording this interview, Mr Regan,’ Süleyman said. ‘Please, you must repeat what you have told us of your family before.’

The interview was conducted in English, and for the duration of Arthur Regan’s story about his marriage and his son John, he spoke rapidly so that only
İ
kmen could understand him with anything approaching ease. When he’d finished, Süleyman asked him, ‘Mr Regan, did you go to visit Abdurrahman
Ş
afak this afternoon?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘at four or thereabouts.’

‘Why did you go to see him?’

‘He asked me to visit,’ the Englishman said. ‘He wanted me to somehow stop my son John’s British publisher from going ahead with reassigning his book to another author. I told him I couldn’t do that, just as I’d told him over the phone about a hundred times before.’

‘Abdurrahman
Ş
afak, he, er, he was, er …’

‘He was bothering you with calls?’
İ
kmen cut in.

‘Yes, he was, and threatening me with court action too. It had to stop,’ Arthur said. ‘Apart from anything else, there was nothing I could do about preventing the book from being published.’

Süleyman looked at
İ
kmen, who motioned for him to continue. Sometimes the younger man’s language skills would let him down, and
İ
kmen would pick up for him, as he’d just done, but it was still Süleyman’s interview.

‘One witness at Mr
Ş
afak’s apartment block tells us that you had an argument with Mr
Ş
afak before you got to the apartment, on the intercom …’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The stupid old fool told me he didn’t want to see me. But the only reason I was there in the first place was because he’d wanted me to visit him.’ He shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t let me in and it made me angry. I said some awful things to him. You know he was dying?’

‘I did not,’ Süleyman said.

‘Well I told him I was glad,’ Arthur said. ‘I swore and shouted and made a real fool of myself.’ He shook his head again. ‘But then he let me in and we talked in quite a civilised fashion. Still with no resolution, but I think I left him with at least some understanding of my point of view. When I took my leave, he was most certainly alive, that I can tell you.’

‘Which was at what time?’

He thought for a moment and then said, ‘It must have been about four forty-five. I didn’t stay long. I can’t remember exactly.’

‘And what did you do after you left Mr
Ş
afak’s apartment in
Ş
i
ş
li?’

‘I went back to the apartment I’m renting in Beyo
ğ
lu and had a drink,’ he said. ‘I needed it. Then I watched television, BBC World.’

‘Er, Abdurrahman
Ş
afak’s maid, Suzan Arslan, can you tell me …’

‘Oh, she wasn’t there,’ he said. ‘The poor little thing had the afternoon off. She must’ve been delighted.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Didn’t she tell you? Probably too scared. He treated her like rubbish.’

‘In what way?’

‘You mean apart from shouting at her, ignoring the fact that she had a name and generally behaving like some sort of autocrat? I don’t know, but I saw her shake every time she had to come close to him. Abdurrahman when young was an arrogant prig; in old age it seemed he’d become a spiteful one. As I say, I don’t know what he did to that girl, but whatever it was she didn’t like it.’

Arthur Regan submitted willingly to DNA and forensic testing, but it was hard for either Süleyman or
İ
kmen to entirely discount him as a suspect. Until Dr Sarkissian had completed his examination and testing of Abdurrahman
Ş
afak’s corpse, a time of death as well as a definitive cause could not be clearly established. Also neighbours in the
Ş
i
ş
li apartment block reported hearing raised voices speaking English on several occasions over the past weeks since Arthur Regan had been in
İ
stanbul. Obviously the men had been very much at odds with each other, but had this turned to violence? Specifically had it turned to the kind of twisted violence that allowed one person to cut out another’s heart? Had Arthur Regan killed his hated brother-in-law in almost exactly the same way as his own son had been murdered?

‘It’s highly unlikely,’
İ
kmen said.

‘But that means that someone else must have come into
Ş
afak’s apartment after Arthur Regan.’

‘Yes.’

‘But none of our witnesses saw anyone apart from the Englishman and the maid.’

‘Not on that day, no,’
İ
kmen said.

‘What, you mean …’

‘Mehmet, my dear boy, we’re clearly dealing with an offender who is very clever,’
İ
kmen said. ‘He or she comes and goes from these people’s lives apparently at will and with a level of invisibility that conceals him from us. But I am beginning to wonder whether we’re asking those witnesses that we have the right questions. For instance, do we have any idea about who might have visited John Regan the day before he died?’

‘No.’

‘Then maybe we should find out,’
İ
kmen said.

Süleyman narrowed his eyes. ‘You think that he could have secreted himself in the building?’

‘Why not?’

‘For over twenty-four hours?’

‘Why not? With the exception of Levent Devrim, all of our victims lived in either considerable apartment blocks or, in Raf
ı
k Efendi’s case, a big house.’

‘Leyla Ablak was murdered at the spa.’

‘Yes, and how difficult would it be to hide out at a spa, especially one attached to a hotel?’

‘We interviewed all the staff and the guests at the hotel.’

‘We also interviewed the manager of the spa, Faruk Genç, who was Leyla Ablak’s lover. We know he wasn’t there when she died. But do we know whether he let someone else in before he left to return home?’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘I don’t know,’
İ
kmen said.

‘You’re implying that Faruk Genç orchestrated Leyla Ablak’s murder via a third party. You’re also implying that Genç wanted his lover dead. Why would that be?’

‘I don’t know,’
İ
kmen said. ‘I’m just speculating. But I think I’m speculating constructively. We now have five unsolved murders; six if you include what may or may not be
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu. Why haven’t we made an arrest?’

‘Who would we have arrested? No one has seen anything or anyone when these people have been killed, and so far the common factors between our victims have only worked up to a point.’

‘But there is the Mayan connection,’
İ
kmen said. ‘In terms of the dates of the murders, that is holding firm. Also, we do seem to be in a pattern now of heart removal …’

‘With the exception of the Aksaray body.’

‘If indeed that is connected to these killings at all,’
İ
kmen said. He paused and shook his head. ‘Four of our victims come from the former Imperial family, and if Professor Atay and Dr Santa Ana are correct, then their royal blood would be interesting to a person who is obsessed with the Mayan 2012 belief system. The fact that Levent Devrim’s death doesn’t conform to that pattern says to me that either it was just a fluke, or he is connected in ways that we don’t yet understand. Did he know people who knew the others? Did he perhaps have acquaintances he met at the Ada bookshop, other people interested in the occult who in turn knew Leyla Ablak, John Regan, Rafik Efendi and Abdurrahman
Ş
afak?’

‘Levent Devrim kept himself to himself,’ Süleyman said. ‘With the exception of the old Kurdish prostitute, Sugar.’

‘Maybe. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether Levent Devrim is the key. Of all our victims, he was the only one where the killer was, possibly, seen.’

‘Disguised.’

‘Maybe,’
İ
kmen said. ‘But a figure was seen, and however outlandish it was, we need to know more about it.’

‘The gypsy boy Hamid saw it, and possibly
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu.’

‘Which may explain why
Ş
ukru, if that body is his, is now no more,’
İ
kmen said. ‘You’ve questioned that boy before, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘So question him again,’
İ
kmen said. ‘And while you’re doing that, I think I might have a look at our victims’ address books, get the sad techies to do whatever one does to access their Facebook pages. This offender got to these people too easily for me to think that he doesn’t know them personally.’

Predictably, the old man had only used paper records. There wasn’t even a computer in the apartment. But the small diary he had kept in an old roll-top desk was neat and appeared to be up to date. What didn’t help was the fact that when Abdurrahman
Ş
afak had made a note of an appointment with a person, he had always omitted, after the old Ottoman custom, to record their surnames. So Arthur Regan was recorded as ‘Arthur Bey’, and even his doctor was expressed as ‘Cemal Bey’.

İ
kmen, bleary-eyed from the frantic activities of the previous day, looked up from the diary at the girl, Suzan, who had brought him a very welcome morning glass of tea. He smiled at her and she looked a little shocked by it. Her own face was still covered with tears. He said, ‘Suzan, your master’s diary is blank with regard to appointments for the two days before his death. Did he perhaps receive an unexpected visitor in that time, do you remember?’

She thought for a moment, sniffed, and then said, ‘No, sir. Not that I know of.’

‘Were you in the apartment the whole time during the course of those two days?’

‘No. I went shopping for maybe two hours for Efendi, the day before he died.’

‘Shopping for what?’
İ
kmen asked.

‘Groceries,’ she said. ‘And also I had to go and have his prescription made up at the pharmacy on Ihlamur Yolu. I had to wait, which was why it took me so long.’

‘What time was this?’

She thought for a moment. Then she said, ‘About midday. When I went out.’

‘So you returned at approximately two,’
İ
kmen said.

‘Yes.’

‘Suzan,’ he said, ‘I have to ask, but …’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Your staying on in this apartment. Are you all right with that? I mean, after …’

‘I have nowhere else to go, sir,’ she said. ‘I came to this city to work for Efendi, I know no one. I am grateful that his family have said I can stay here. And the room where Efendi … where he died, it’s locked.’

The forensic team had taken everything they needed from the old man’s living room, which nevertheless still left a very large apartment.

He smiled at her and said, ‘Yes, yes it is. Thank you, Suzan.’ When he turned back to the desk again, he heard her sob.

‘Enjoy your tea, sir,’ she said, and then she left to go about her business.

İ
kmen had thought it was odd that the only other bed in the apartment apart from Abdurrahman
Ş
afak’s was an ornate, clearly unused gilded confection that had apparently once belonged to the Efendi’s parents. He hadn’t known where Suzan slept until she’d told him that her ‘bed’ was in fact a large wooden chest outside the kitchen.
İ
kmen had been disgusted, but he had also been intrigued. People who retained servants had generally moved on from such barbaric practices. But then the old man had been locked in the kind of past that did not permit the modern world. He hadn’t even had a television.